MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
type of communication model, particularly in the case of civil society
organisations being targeted by media as not fulilling their social role,
not having transparent policies and procedure etc. The messages by the
civil society organisations and the criticism by media are in this model
complementary but because of different goals the conlict is necessary
part of their relationship based on this model. Again, civil society
organisations lack capacity to present their policies and procedures
transparently and gain media approval instead of criticism.
Finally, what has been found to be the least used and should be the
subject of commitment of both sides is a dialogical communication
where civil society organisations and media communicate on the
basis of two-way symmetrical model of communication. This model
of communication whereby the organisation is ready to alter its
initial positions based on the feedback and the reaction of the other
organisation, stakeholder or publics, is rarely implemented by civil
society organisations in the considered region, mainly for the lack of
knowledge about dialogical communication or the lack of skills to impose
that type of communication. Media, particularly new media, however,
do use dialogical communication increasingly and are therefore also
valuable channel for indirect dialogical communication of civil society
organisations with their publics. In this type of communication to which
both side should commit, the relationship of the two sides would be
based on the cooperation.
The four models of public communication develop a framework that
portrays the area of potential cooperation between media and civil
society in supporting the mutual goals of promoting and protecting social
interests. This framework serves to position media relations of a civil
society organisation in eficient communication terms. This positioning
of media relations, in addition, needs to be considered within the pattern
of media relations which function not only as traditional media relations
but also as network based media relations which adds new quality to
the concept of media relations of an organisation. It is particularly
relevant for civil society organisations in the considered region because
it carries the potential to broaden the scope of their interest which is
related to an increased power of new media and velocity of change of
new technologies.
In that respect two types of strategies for media relations need to
be considered; classical media relations based on objectivity and
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